Here is an introduction to this section of the my blog which documents my further research, conversations, personal work or anything photography related.
I have been interested in many facets of photography over the recent months and have found much to explore. One thing I am a little worried about is the degree of time I need to fully understand photoshop! it seems a different animal to lightroom and me but I cant seem to get away from the fact it does serve a very good purpose. I’ve dabbled in some basic principles and Udemy courses, which i’m yet to find the time to fit in, but I still seem to struggle with picking it up. I need to find an alternative solution, and that may well be just using the adobe tutorials that come with the software. I really struggle to follow some of the YouTube tutorials and frequently become frustrated rather than informed. Anyhow I’ve wanted to play with focus stacking for a period of time and with the onset of spring and some intriguing plants and flowers I decided to play with my sigma 105 2.8 macro on the D800 body. I came across some Dandelion heads (pappus) on a photography walk with my children. I was only armed with my compact camera which is ideal to carry around and something the children can play with also. We picked some of the heads and headed home where I sat the heads in glass with a little water and perched it on a window sill in natural light. This was purely experimental and I was unsure of whether to use a dark or light backdrop. For the first set I decided on a black card, which had varying results.
Without going through the whole process in photoshop I stacked around 70 images which all had different focus points. I used live-view to find the focus points and had the camera mounted on a tripod. I focused on various parts of the subject, without moving the camera or subject. The above single image is a minimally edited image from the final blend. Perhaps not the best outcome, but I am relatively happy. I would also add that its very easy to overdo this in process and not sure if I have maintained the balance. Its difficult not to over-sharpen the image or add to much clarity and texture. An interesting experiment all the same.
I had a second go at this in early morning light.
I decided to use a higher aperture here in a bid to capture more detail. This final stacked image is around 50 separate shots. I feel that the natural light was to harsh and needed to be diffused as there are areas where the pappus is blown out.
Below is my favourite image than happens to be only a single shot.
Dan Towell OCA Context and Narrative 